"Do you mind if I sit at your table?" he asked, with sudden humility, and laid his hand on the edge of it.

It was the sign for which the dog was waiting, the token he had set himself to recognize. With the smooth celerity of a piece of machinery, he opened a flank attack at once. The table was between Mr. Blake and Miss Gregory, so that she could not see what was happening to that gentleman's right calf, and for a moment she thought that sudden madness had seized him. He made a strange noise between a scream and a grunt, and leaped backward.

"What on earth--" began Miss Gregory, half rising, and then she saw. "Oh, Pat, you beast! Come here at once, sir."

The deluded Pat had a strip of black cloth in his teeth; he flaunted it vaingloriously, the while he moved exultantly before Mr. Blake with a motion like a mechanical rocking-horse and feinted for another opening.